Email shows Florida Democratic official sought to use altered forms for reaching voters with ballot problems

Senator Bill Nelson has called for a recount. Do the vote margins in his race against Rick Scott call for one?
Nate Chute, IndyStar

Bins filled with ballots are stacked at the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office as employees count ballots during a recount Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla.(Photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP)

TALLAHASSEE – A Democratic party official in Florida directed aides to share altered election forms with voters in an effort to fix ballot signature problems a day after polls closed in the key swing state, an email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK shows.

The email shows a Democratic party leader provided staff with altered copies of a state form that were modified to give the impression that voters had more time to correct signature problems with mailed-in ballots than they actually had under state law.

The altered forms, which turned up in four counties in the state, appear to be an effort to increase the number of Democratic ballots counted in the state's hotly contested races for governor and Senate, election experts said.

It is not clear whether the effort changed the tally in any of the state’s marquee races, but election experts said altering the form is illegal and the controversy is likely to spur claims that party officials attempted to undermine the voting process.

Officials at the Florida Department of State said they asked federal prosecutors last week to investigate altered forms received by local election supervisors.

Jake Sanders, a Democratic campaign consultant in the state, told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that he warned party officials about potential legal problems with the altered forms and was ignored.

"They should have been saying, 'This is unprecedented, we are fighting for your vote to count, fill this out so we can fight for you,'” Sanders said. “But self-imposing a fake deadline and deceiving people is counter to that."

Election officials check the signatures on mailed ballots against the signatures they have on record. If they don’t match, the ballot is set aside for further review. When that happens, a voter has the ability to resubmit their signature on a form to “cure” the difference between the signatures and have their ballot counted.

The email encouraged Florida Democrats to identify the challenged ballots and send the altered signature correction forms to voters. But the language was different: It replaced the deadline of 5 p.m. on Nov. 5, the day before the election, with a new deadline, "no later than 5 p.m. Thursday Nov. 8."

The altered forms surfaced in Broward, Santa Rosa, Citrus and Okaloosa counties. It is not clear whether election officials in those counties actually accepted any of the altered signature forms, given that they would have arrived after the state’s deadline.

Charles Zelden, political science professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida and an election expert, said the move presented the appearance of trying to game the system.

“But a strict reading of the rules says if they don’t get it in the day before the day of the election, those votes don’t get counted anyhow. So on the surface, it’s a very inefficient way to game the system,” he said. “It could be a Hail Mary effort.”

Zelden said that if “this is an attempt at fraud to sneak in votes that would have not been counted otherwise, I’m just saying its chances of working are not great (but) it does play into the narrative of Republicans that this is a fraudulent effort and gives it some validity.”

Republicans, including the state’s governor and GOP Senate candidate Rick Scott and President Donald Trump, have been alleging fraud in the days since the Nov. 6 election. County officials were expected to complete a machine recount in three competitive statewide races on Thursday.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that voters should have until Saturday to correct signatures on ballots, a move that could open the door for these ballots returned with altered forms to be counted. Republicans supporting Scott, who leads incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by less than 13,000 votes in the recount, appealed the ruling.

"Democrats even admitted plans to fraudulently mislead voters in anticipation of including ballots submitted after the legal deadline if they could convince a judge to disregard Florida election law," Zeckman said. "Federal prosecutors are also investigating this clear example of attempt to fraudulently mislead voters by the Democrat Party in Florida."

Nelson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Democratic Party Executive Director Juan Penalosa also did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the use of the altered forms.

The party compiled a list of voters and their contact information across the state who had their vote-by-mail ballots flagged with signature problems, and therefore not eligible.

It is not clear how many altered forms were sent across the state, but an email drafted by the state party’s central Florida deputy field director that was obtained by the USA TODAY Network-Florida outlined a step-by-step process for volunteers and staffers to follow to get as many voters as possible to submit the altered form three days after the deadline.

“The voters MUST print out the form and sign it by hand,” the party official, Jennifer Kim, wrote in the email that attached copies of the altered forms in both English and Spanish. The email also included a sheet with the contact information of all election supervisors in the state.

Kim was clear that staffers should target people who submitted absentee vote-by-mail ballots before Election Day and did not sign them properly. Her email subject line said "VBM signature cure instructions" and labeled the list of voters to be contacted as "VBM signature chases."

State Democrats have come under fire previously for suggesting to voters that the deadline to submit the ballot was later than it actually was. Pam Keith, a Palm Beach County Democrat, posted a Nov. 7 tweet in which she encouraged people to fix their absentee ballots two days after the state-mandated deadline.

Keith told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that she was aware the deadline to submit "cure affidavits" had expired but she told people there was still time to fix their absentee ballots.

"I was trying to show that if given notice, voters would try to fix their ballots," Keith said. "I was putting the word out because I was anticipating a (legal) challenge of that deadline."

An email that Jennifer Kim, Florida Democratic Party’s central deputy field director, sent Nov. 7 to party workers instructing them how to give voters an altered form to fix signature problems with their absentee ballots after the state deadline. Kim’s email shows this is a statewide effort to give voters the altered form with the wrong deadline to return it. The altered forms have turned up in several counties and have been turned over to federal prosecutors to review for possible election fraud.(Photo: Submitted Photo)

She later deleted the tweet.

The Department of State, which oversees elections in Florida, raised concerns about the alterations, arguing that making changes to a state form is a criminal offense.

Election experts said that if state Democrats had sent a notice to their voters with challenged ballots, encouraging them to attempt to correct their signatures even though the deadline to do so had passed, they’d likely be in the clear.

The legal problem for Democrats is that they distributed the altered elections form, said Michael McDonald, an election expert at the University of Florida and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The political problem, he said, could be wider if it casts doubt on their intentions.

McDonald likened the episode to another this year in which an election supervisor in heavily Republican Bay County counted ballots cast by email or fax, which is not permitted.

“In both cases, there were efforts to ensure that voters’ ballots would be counted and so while there were maybe violations of the law, I wouldn’t be going after either one of these,” he said. “But, undoubtedly, that’s not how this is going to play out.”